Flores, who has San Joaquin County family roots, dismisses cultural limitations, too.

"Obviously, I'm Latina-Chicana and I wanna identify with that," Flores said from Orange (Orange County), where she lives with her aunt. "But it doesn't make a difference. I want comedy where I can talk and reach people in Kansas and still make them get it. I don't wanna only make people laugh in Santa Ana. I wanna make Alaskans laugh, too."

Also, skeptical guys from Long Beach.

"His wife invited him and he complained the whole time," Flores said, recalling one man's reaction at a recent show in Santa Ana. "When he found out it was a girl, he started rolling his eyes: 'Female comics aren't funny.' After the show, he came up, apologized and said, 'I stand corrected. That was a great night.' "

After "going through the motions" of a real-estate career, Flores failed to find it all that funny.

With her family's encouragement, she followed her sense of humor by doing a stand-up show at Sacramento's Punch Line in 2010.

"Actually, it came naturally," she said. "The first time, I was 'OK, how are you gonna do this? You've always been able to make your friends laugh.' It requires immediate thinking. It just started flowing out of me. I was shocked myself."

The flow of fun began when Flores was a child. Born in Modesto, she laughed a lot at "hilarious" stories told by her father and uncles.

After her parents - Tokay High School graduates Rogelio Flores and Vicenthia "Kathy" Zuniga - divorced when Monique was 7, she and her older brothers (Royce and Mario) moved to Anaheim with their mother. They shifted around Orange County "like gypsies."

Each summer until she was 18, Flores returned to the Central Valley (her dad lived in Oakdale). She still considers the valley "honestly, my home base throughout my life."

Flores and her brothers watched "The Toy," a 1982 Richard Pryor film, "over and over and again. We can quote it." Eddie Murphy was a big influence, too. They'd check out Cheech & Chong movies "behind our parents' backs. It was crazy to me."

Flores used humor to ease school-to-school transitions in Orange County: "It was a defense mechanism. Being funny. I was always the new kid walking in. It was a way to be easily liked. Cool."

After graduating from Alta Loma High School, Flores studied business at the University of LaVerne - her mom is an accountant and her dad owns a construction company - because "I wanted to make money."

She started "rocking and rolling right out of college on a real-estate wave, but it wasn't something I wanted to do full-time," she said. "Stand-up was something I always wanted to do. I like comedy because it's wild and you don't know what's gonna happen next."

Using Post-It notes, she began formulating a plan: "Yeah, we'll see what happens." Real-estate is a fall-back option.

So far, she's moving straight ahead on the Southern California club circuit - from Pasadena's Ice House to a "hole-in-the-wall" in Baldwin Park and the Hollywood Improv.

"I actually was kind of nervous at first," Flores said. "Also, the caliber of talent. Going on after a man was kinda like a big deal. It's a different ball game. You wanna bring your A-game."

She develops her "PG-13" material from life as a "Latina in Southern California," Flores said. "I've actually been blessed. I do topical stuff. 'The Maury Povich Show.' Paternity tests. A Mexican father and things he can do for his kids. Like whistle for them. The single-girls club. Who am I?

"My style can be raw, too. Some real stuff might not be politically correct, but it makes people laugh. I'm still trying to figure out who I am as a comic. Jokes I do now are not the jokes I'll be telling a year or two from now."

She'll still be doing them as a comic pioneer.

"It's like on a wrestling team or a football team," she said. "Girls definitely are a minority. I'm never gonna be one of the guys. We don't understand men. Like they don't understand us.

"I've been proving stereotypes wrong all my life. It definitely makes me feel good to do the best when there are a bunch of guys on the bill."